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#FTW: Josh Amberger's Cairns Victory

How did the Aussie athlete spring to his first IRONMAN win? Geek out with us over the details of the new champ's win.

by AJ Johnson

In only his third IRONMAN start, Australian Josh Amberger showed what he was capable of with a convincing win on home soil at the Cairns Airport IRONMAN Asia-Pacific Championship, in Cairns, Australia. Once thought of as a strong swim/biker who didn’t have the run legs to compete for the win, Amberger’s rock solid run turned that assumption on its face.

The lead up

Only six months ago, Amberger began working with a new coach Cam Watt, who happens to live in the same town as he does. "I was at a point at the end of last year where I need to make some changes," the athlete said. "Cam is local to me, and it was easy for him to come watch me do some runs. Instantly he was like 'this is what we need to work on' and he rolled off all of these technique things."

After those few trials with Watt, it was clear to the athlete that this was the best way forward. Having that face time with his coach every day has been invaluable. "I’ve literally put everything about this race down to that," he said.

Ten weeks prior to Cairns, Amberger raced the Standard Bank IRONMAN African Championship, placing 18th after a 3:23 marathon. "I put myself in two regional championships to get absolute maximum exposure to the distance," he said.
"I didn’t want to put myself in a race which could give me false expectations of where my abilities were. "

Despite his overall placing, Amberger learned a lot from that race. "I cooked up South Africa trying to ride with the leaders," he recalled. "They were unbelievable that day. That was good for me because I knew how much work I needed to do in the 10 weeks between the races and Cam gave me two weeks off after the race. I came back to training a week early because I was so pumped to get back into it."

In those 10 weeks, Amberger put together the best training block of his life: "I felt like I actually had career-best fitness going into the race," he says.

Despite all the good signs, he did not set the goal of taking the victory. "While I didn’t expect to win and it wasn’t necessarily a goal to win, I wouldn’t have walked away disappointed if I was second or third.

Race day

On the big day, it was no surprise that Amberger and fellow super swimmer Clayton Fettell lead out of the water with Amberger exiting in 47:15 and Fettell just seconds behind. The duo got on the bike and immediately got to work on the 112 mile bike course. Just two minutes behind was a large group, including Cam Wurf, a super cyclist that Amberger planned to key off of. "In South Africa, he [Wurf] passed us like an absolute freight train, it was ridiculous," said Amberger. "My plan was to ride with Clayton and work with him for as long as possible keeping in mind that I needed freshness for when Cam came past."

So why did Amberger think he could hold on this time? After South Africa, he realized that while Wurf could hammer, he couldn’t quite hold it for the full 112 miles. Second, at South Africa, the gap out of the water was smaller than what Amberger would normally expect, so when Wurf caught him it was early on the course with fresh legs.
At Cairns, the gap was two minutes to Wurf, giving Amberger a boost of confidence. "I knew that because of my fitness and because of the outcome of the swim that it was more than possible to then ride with him even though he totally bludgeoned me in South Africa," he said.

It took Wurf nearly 50 miles, but when he caught the leading duo, he attacked. Amberger was ready and prepared to push. "I was looking behind me every 30 seconds seeing when he was coming, making sure he wasn’t going to come past like a missile because that was the meal ticket, trying to see how long I could ride with Cam," he said.

Analyzing the data

Looking at Amberger’s power file on Training Peaks, we can see the spike (right at 1:58) where Wurf attacked. The move shed Fettell, leaving Amberger and Wurf out front. As Wurf repeatedly surged to get clear, Amberger was able to hold on. "Riding with Cam in sections I was well above the power I knew that was manageable, but then again I was always able to get my nutrition in and still able to recover in sections. The toughest challenge is just trying to count down the hours."

Then, at the 80 mile mark, the power left Wurf’s legs and Amberger went around him. "I think the key point of the race (and I can take more confidence out of this than actually winning the race) is actually reading when his power almost evaporated," said Amberger. "I read him really well. This was the longest downhill section and for some reason I was just like, 'He’s going to go here' and I was able to respond.

Amberger pointed out that looking at his power file, you can see three distinct sections: riding with Fettel the first two hours, where he shared turns and averaged 245 watts. While riding with Wurf and responding to his surges for 1:07, his power jumped to an average of 260 watts. For the final 1:09 on his own he averaged 245 watts.

"Maybe I’ve found my forte now that I’m doing IRONMAN."

Another interesting part of Amberger's file is that his longer peak power values are all separate. Typically, peak power values over 10 minutes overlap, meaning the peak 20 is part of the peak 30 and so on. On this day, Amberger’s peak 20, 30 and 60 minute power values are all completely independent of each other. His peak 20 minute power of 274 watts came early at mile 27 through the 36 mile mark. Then, for miles 51 through 64, Amberger set his peak 30 minute power, holding 266 watts. His 1-hour peak power came at miles 67 to 93 where he held 261 watts.
After dropping Wurf, Amberger focused on his own power and getting to the run.

"The last section of the race was about feeling good and confident heading into the run feeling like I had more in the tank," he recalled.
All of this adds up for a textbook power file when you look at the key metrics.

Intensity Factor

Amberger’s Intensity Factor (IF), a measure of how intensely he rode, was .76, a bit on the low end of what we typically see in pro men’s file (though recent IRONMN Texas winner Matt Hanson won with an IF of .75). In this case, a lower IF is not a bad thing as it shows that he could have gone harder if need be, but didn’t and was able to save his legs for the run. Amberger put his power down evenly, displayed by a Variability Index (VI) of only 1.03. This means that his power output was not only steady, but that it didn’t drop off either. Finally, at a race weight of 63.5kg and an average power of 251 watts, Amberger held 3.95W/kg, or right at what we typically see from a top pro male.

Cadence

One number that is not so textbook is Amberger’s average cadence of 79rpm. Most athletes hold 85 to 90 rpm, but Watt is a big believer in using a low cadence to build strength to use on race day. "Cam was able to look back and see that I did no strength work on the bike, it was all race pace and above," said Amberger. "The cadence comes as a consequence of trying to become stronger and trying to ride with more of an emphasis on strength." Making the transition was relatively smooth and the low cadence now feels natural.

A stellar run to the win

On the run, Amberger continued to race smart and was eager to display the confidence he had in his running. In the early miles, the time gap did come down, but Amberger had anticipated this and did not panic. "I knew how a lot of those guys would run the race," he said. "At every U-turn there was a big bunch and when you’re riding an IRONMAN like that you know a lot them are going to come off the bike feeling really good."

Though he knew would lose time early, he didn’t make it easy for them. "I was actually running well above my limits at the start as well, coming in at low 3:50/km (6:14 per mile), or low 2:40 marathon territory." He says he knew the group had gone out way too quickly when he saw how much time they’d taken out of him. This tactic wasn’t planned, it was simply that Amberger was feeling good on the day.

Before the race, Watt emphasized to Amberger how important it was to nail down good technique in the early miles. "I was able to run with the form that I needed to," said Amberger.
When the gap stagnated at about six minutes, his confidence rose. The one athlete Amberger had to watch was Joe Gambles, who was closing in on the lead rapidly. "Even though Joe finished with absolute lightning speed I was confident that all I needed to do was just hold it and not do anything special," he said.

Amberger did just that, holding of Gambles by nearly two minutes to take his first IRONMAN win.

A big win against a high quality field gives any athlete confidence, and Amberger now feels like he’s found his distance: "I feel like now I can be competitive in the full-distance as I’d always wanted to be in IRONMAN 70.3," he commented. "Maybe I’ve actually found my forte now that I’m actually doing IRONMAN. You never want to say anything before you achieve it, but I always felt like it was going to be the distance for me. But we’ll see what I do from here."